The Value of Data-Driven Content

If you could ask the editors at your favorite publications anything, what would you want to know? My Influence & Co. team members and I wanted to learn what editors are looking for in the content they publish — so we asked them. We surveyed more than 140 editors at leading online publications (and analyzed more than 4 million pieces of published content) to create our 2017 “The State of Digital Media” report.

To help ourselves and our clients contribute better guest posts, we asked editors about everything from the types of content they’re seeking and how they measure success to what gets content rejected. The results were fascinating.

One particularly helpful finding was that publication editors agree that the best content includes truly original insights and outside data.

Why is data so important for content? The answer is actually pretty simple. Put yourself in your audience members’ shoes: What kind of content do you think they’d rather consume? Content that’s rooted in self-promotion and rattles off your opinions? Or content that’s inspired by expertise and backed up by facts and industry data?

As the content landscape gets more crowded, your top priority this year needs to be creating and publishing engaging content that provides value to your audience — and data can help.

Where Data Plays a Role In the Content Creation Process

I’m not just talking about incorporating data into your content. To really be effective, you and your content team should use data at every step of the content marketing process.

Data should inform each of the following steps:

• Ideation
• Creation
• Publication and distribution
• Measurement and analysis

Make sure you are taking the right steps in 2018 to create data-driven content that is personalized, engaging, speaks to your audience and is what publication editors are looking for. Tune in to our webinar with FullContact on Jan 25th where we’ll dive deeper into how you can do just that and provide amazing resources you won’t want to create content without.

Sign up for the webinar today!